Landsat 9


Landsat 9 is a planned Earth observation satellite, scheduled for launch on 8 April 2021. NASA is in charge of building, launching, and testing the system, while the United States Geological Survey will process, archive, and distribute its data. It will be the eighth satellite in the Landsat series, as Landsat 6 failed to reach orbit. As of May 2020, United Launch Alliance is planning for a Spring 2021 launch on an Atlas V 401 rocket, which will lift off from Space Launch Complex-3E at Vandenberg Air Force Base. The Critical Design Review was completed by NASA on April 2018, and Orbital ATK was given the go-ahead to manufacture the satellite.

Design

The design and construction of Landsat 9 were assigned by NASA, under a delivery order contract to Orbital ATK, in October 2016. The purchase cost of US$129.9 million is part of a five-year contract between the two entities. The budget that provides for initial work on Landsat 9 also calls for research into less expensive and smaller components for future Landsat hardware.
Landsat 9 will largely replicate the functions of its predecessor Landsat 8. The former will include near-identical copies of remote sensors: the Operational Land Imager and the Thermal Infrared Sensor instruments – optical and thermal sensors respectively – that will be designated OLI-2 and TIRS-2; the latter will be upgraded to a risk class B implementation, while no changes will be applied to OLI-2.
NASA selected Ball Aerospace & Technologies to provide the OLI-2 instrument through a sole source procurement. OLI-2 will collect data for nine spectral bands with a ground sample distance of 30 m for all bands except the panchromatic band, which has a 15 m GSD.
NASA assigned the TIRS-2 instrument as a directed development to GSFC. Design changes to the TIRS-2 are intended to address the stray light and Scene Select Mechanism encoder problems experienced with the TIRS on Landsat 8. Testing and assessment of the TIRS-2 demonstrate the stray light magnitude has been reduced to 1%.

Schedule

Landsat 9 has a contracted launch date of no later than June 2021, though United Launch Alliance could launch the spacecraft as soon as December 2020 if it was ready. The launch is currently scheduled for on 8 April 2021. This is 4–5 years after the end of Landsat 7's mission design lifetime, and near the end of its maximum lifetime. Funding decisions may change the launch date. The Launch Services Program at the Kennedy Space Center will control the launch services, which is planned to be launched from the Vandenberg Air Force Base.